


something there is (that doesn't love a wall)

by spinoffprotagonist



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Living Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, author abuses line breaks like a champ, brief cooking scene bc i got hungry, for some reason futakuchi is a vegetarian here, not beta read it is currently 4.20 am as I am publishing this heck yeah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27166996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinoffprotagonist/pseuds/spinoffprotagonist
Summary: Walls and door knobs and Daishou Suguru. It’s an easy choice between the three.
Relationships: Daishou Suguru/Futakuchi Kenji
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	something there is (that doesn't love a wall)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by snippets of the poem 'Mending Wall' by Robert Frost. enjoy!

**_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,_ **

_That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,_

_And spills the upper boulders in the sun;_

_And makes gaps even two can pass abreast._

Kenji pauses on the brink of nothing but bad decisions, hand hovering over the doorknob, chewing on his lip in half-annoyance and half-nerves. His gaze is pulled towards the sticky note on the door.

_I can’t stand you,_ Daishou had hissed out, minutes earlier, slamming the door behind him.

_Don’t come in. Door’s locked._

He’s not a fool. He knows the door isn’t locked without even having to check. There are a million other ways for Daishou to say he truly and utterly means to be left alone.

Harsher shoulder bumps, for instance. A colder smile that stretches his lips and does not crinkle his eyes. Sarcastic stare turning caustic, never being in the same area of their shared apartment if he can help it, relaxed posture drawn taut like a snake poised to strike.

This is much worse. It’s unfamiliar.

_One, two_. Kenji holds his breath in his lungs, and exhales softly through his mouth.

There’s a rustle on the other side of the door, presumably Daishou altering his sitting position on his bed. Daishou can never stay still for longer than half a minute. Kenji knows this, every time Daishou swings his legs from the couch armrest to Kenji’s lap, slides his hands against Kenji from neck to ear to cheek, goes from leaning against pillows to pressing against Kenji’s side.

The note on the door isn’t very sticky, after all. It falls with a gentle flutter, lands right in front of his feet.

Another rustle. Bed creaking from a shift in weight. Footsteps, nearing the door. They are one wall apart.

Kenji lets his hand fall and turns back, halfway to his room by the time the doorknob turns.

* * *

_I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;_

_And on a day we meet to walk the line_

_And set the wall between us once again._

**_We keep the wall between us as we go._ **

It’s his turn to take care of dinner today, and Kenji does _not_ want to lift a finger to do anything if he can help it. Yet here he is, looking through the sad contents of their fridge, wondering what he can put together from leftover ingredients meant for instant ramen meals. There’s tofu and daikon and chopped scallions. He takes them out, and sets them on the kitchen counter.

The kitchen loves to remind Kenji that it is a horrible place. Horribly cramped, horribly stuffy, horribly narrow.

So it comes as no surprise when Kenji hits his hip against the snack cupboard and scowls in pain, strings of curse words spilling from his mouth as he grips the fridge handle tightly.

Hell. It’s going to bruise green, the same way Daishou Suguru presses into every part of his life until Kenji bruises green and yellow and purple-blue for him. Intrusive. Merciless.

_Annoying_ , Daishou would’ve mouthed at him sardonically, if he weren’t two walls away and still in his room. Kenji refuses to miss the touch of slender fingers that might have rubbed Kenji’s bruise and settled against his hip bone. Refuses to be haunted by the idea of warm breath ghosting past his neck, the phantom of a body leaning over towards Kenji in that horribly cramped kitchen.

He cannot miss something he never had before. It’s like wishing to remember what’s on the other side of the wall before he’s even crossed it.

Kenji doesn’t particularly like facing walls.

Preparing food takes his mind off thinking, at least. He does the simplest dish he can do well. Dries the tofu, chops the daikon, prepares sauce from Kikkoman shoyu, kombu dashi and mirin in a small dish. Smaller portion of scallions and thicker shreds of daikon than if he were to make it for himself. Kenji coats the tofu in potato starch and drops several squares inside a small pan of bubbling oil, the sizzle of frying keeping his thoughts far away from the dangerous territory of walls and doorknobs and Daishou Suguru. 

Instant ramen and agedashi tofu on the side is not a combination of food most people have heard of. Possibly not one that should exist, really.

The prepared food is brought to their small round dining table and set down with a thump. Daishou is already seated there, shuffling his feet against the floor, his line of sight fixed on tofu and ramen and everywhere but Kenji’s eyes.

They are not two walls apart now, but it sure feels like they are.

_Dammit,_ Kenji realises, curling his hands with a twitch of realisation. He hasn’t added bonito flakes to garnish the agedashi tofu. He doesn’t care much for it, but Daishou enjoys the umami flavour, which is the only reason why it’s there amongst all his vegetarian ingredients. Luckily or not, the kitchen shelf is high but easy to reach. Without bothering to look at the shelf, Kenji’s hand sweeps past cookie tins and sour gummy boxes and ‒ _oh_.

His fingers wrap around a dusty plastic cube. Kenji pulls it down for examination before his brain can tell him otherwise.

It’s a Rubix cube, left half-unsolved. They’d won it at a fair as a pity prize after failing to knock down soda cans with weighted bean bags even after eleven tries.

_Try to solve it_ , Daishou had pushed, a challenge in the lift of his brow. _I’m sure you’re smart enough, Futakuchi-kun_.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Kenji doesn’t know. He never bothered to finish solving it.

_You give up wayyy too easily_.

There’s a bitter taste in his mouth as he slides the Rubix cube back onto the shelf and reaches for the bonito flakes instead.

* * *

_We wear our fingers rough with handling them._

_Oh, just another kind of out-door game,_

_One on a side. It comes to little more:_

_There where it is we do not need the wall:_

**_He is all pine and I am apple orchard._ **

  
  


Dinner is quiet except for the clinking of chopsticks and slurping of noodles. The light in the dining area has been broken for the past week, and they’ve elected to eat by candlelight until either one of them gets the opportunity to buy a new lightbulb.

_Romantic_ , he'd told Daishou sarcastically, resting his chin on one hand, even as his gaze slid over sharp features softened by the orange candle glow. The aroma of white balsam and vanilla lingering in the space between them, winter-warm and sweet. The absence of something more.

_Gross, no. I’d do better than that. A fancy restaurant or something. Unless_ this _is what you want._

_I_ don’t _want_. _What makes you think I want anything at all?_

They’re both slow eaters. Kenji tastes the crispy exterior and silken interior of his tofu, shuts his eyes for the briefest moment to savour his food. He _will_ enjoy his food, even if Daishou is doing his best to avoid acknowledging him like there’s an iron wall between them. He opens his eyes to take another bite.

Daishou is looking right at him, head tilted and brows drawn together, tongue flicking out underneath his right incisor. The same expression reserved for picking apart abandoned Rubix cubes and puzzles he can’t immediately solve. “The food’s nice,” he begins, pale face painted in warm hues under candlelight, except it seems more blush-pink than amber-flame. “Futakuchi-kun‒”

Kenji cuts in abruptly, words falling out of his mouth before he realises what he’s doing, simply because he _needs_ to speak before Daishou can say anything that’ll make the poison-ivy itch in his chest swell into a blister. “You can’t stand me, but you can tolerate my cooking?”

A pause. Daishou’s mouth parts as he considers the question, and gracelessly chooses not to answer.

“Asshole,” Kenji mutters, casting a sideways glance at him. Daring Daishou to retort back, argue, say _something_ that isn’t just useless filler and pseudo-politeness. “You know what, Daishou? Maybe _you’re_ the one I can’t stand, after all.” Which isn’t what he means to say at all, but Kenji is a stubborn fool who has mastered the art of walling himself in with sharp words as bricks and denial as cement.

Daishou’s face blanches as he grins at Kenji, suddenly. A cold smile that stretches his lips and does not crinkle his eyes. Exhaustion creeping into his lowered eyelids, washing over his countenance.

This is so much worse. It’s familiar and not, all at the same time, and Kenji wants out, out, _out_.

He stands up, the sudden screech of chair legs dragged against the floor grating and sharp in his ears. Ready to bolt.

“Futakuchi-kun,” Daishou says slowly, eyes fixed on the flickering candle. “If you really meant‒”

_No_. No, he didn’t mean the venom in his words at all, but Kenji’s starting to realise that he had wanted to say something else that _isn’t_ supposed to sting, or scathe, or keep Daishou at an arm’s length apart and more.

“Yes, I meant it,” he interjects instead, and smiles lazily like the edge of a razor. It’s not a total lie.

_You’re the one I can’t stand to be without_.

Kenji turns on his heel and leaves; from one to two to three walls apart as he shuts the door to his bedroom.

  
  


* * *

_Before I built a wall I'd ask to know_

_What I was walling in or walling out,_

_And to whom I was like to give offense._

**_Something there is that doesn't love a wall,_ **

**_That wants it down._ **

If Daishou was here to see Kenji, he would’ve called him a drama king and an emotionally constipated jerk and launched several other attacks on his personality by now. None of them would’ve been inaccurate, either. Perceptive to a fault. A fault Kenji couldn’t help but begrudgingly develop a fondness for, after coming to live in the same apartment with him for months.

He didn’t have to tell Daishou if he was having a particularly bad day, or if he wanted to do nothing but get home and _nap_ for three hours straight. All it took was a bored sigh, slower pace of walking, posture hunched just a little more than usual. Daishou just seemed to _know_.

_Why, Futakuchi-kun,_ he’d call after Kenji from the sofa, _Was everyone else_ that _insufferable today that they gave you a run for your money?_ A thumb jabbed carelessly towards the direction of Kenji’s room, the dark sweep of his hair obscuring the left side of his face. _Go eat your veggie gyoza. Don’t be a grouchy bummer for the rest of the night._ All this while not even bothering to look up from his Kindle book on sociology or whatever, legs bouncing against the ridiculous avocado pillow he’d claimed he bought for Kenji because it was _apparently_ what a vegetarian like him would want.

Avocado _is_ nice and a perfectly good fruit, but Kenji had refused to give Daishou the satisfaction of being right, and so the avocado pillow had been compromisingly repurposed for the couch as a shared item from then on. Other than the apartment, it’s one of the only things they share.

Kenji looks down at the soft yellow-green of the oval pillow he’s instinctively pulled close to his chest, the moment he’d sat himself down on the edge of his bed.

_Oh_. What’s it doing here in his room, then?

There’s a soft knock on his bedroom door; Daishou rapping his knuckles against dark wood like he’s warding off bad luck.

Kenji lets out an internal groan, staring fixedly at the brass knob on his door. _Don’t come in. Door’s locked._

The doorknob begins to turn anyway, to Kenji’s not-quite-annoyance-but-might-as-well-have-been.

Daishou’s not a fool.

He probably knows the door isn’t locked without even having to check. There are a million other ways for Kenji to say he truly and utterly means to be left alone.

None of which Kenji is considering at the moment. Not when Daishou drops next to him on the bed with a sigh, and doesn’t meet his eyes at all as he exhales quietly before he speaks.

“Idiot,” Daishou offers by way of greeting, a hint of apology in his falling intonation. He’s seated far enough from Kenji that he’s allowed himself to be conveniently ignored, if Kenji turns his head away by just a few degrees. “You didn’t even let me finish my sentence just now.”

“What do you even have to say that I don’t already _know_ ?” Kenji finally tilts his head back to look at Daishou, tensing his jaw so much that a slow ache is already starting to build. “Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but we’ve done _nothing_ but piss each other off like this over the past few months of living together.”

There’s something akin to offense and _amusement_ flashing across Daishou’s face. “Really,” he hums thoughtfully, fingers drumming against the bedpost. “Is that all you think we’ve‒ I’ve been doing?”

_What else could it be?_ Kenji does not ask, because he’s not sure he wants to think about whatever he’s expecting Daishou to reply. “If it’s not you being a bastard, I don’t really _care_ if I know or not.” Pause. Steadying himself from head to toe with a deeper intake of breath, wall-like but not there yet. “Tell me anyway.”

Bedsheets rustle as Daishou shifts just a little closer. Half a knee apart, shoulders nearly touching, the distance reduced from three walls to one to none.

“I’ve been trying very hard to make you understand that perhaps I like you,” Daishou says, bold-faced and plainly. “That’s it.”

“That,” and Kenji laughs incredulously, not knowing what else to say. “That’s _it_?”

“What, you want something more?”

The provocation is expected, at this point. He stares at Daishou, too confused to be annoyed, too annoyed to be confused, only to be met with an eyebrow raise that seems all too familiar. _Try to solve it. I know you're smart enough, Futakuchi-kun_.

_Stupid Suguru_ , Kenji thinks, means it and doesn’t at the same time. Instead he grumbles, under his breath. “Stupid Rubix cube.”

His right hand presses against the bone of Daishou’s right shoulder, shifting closer, bringing legs up to be wrapped around his waist. Left hand stretched over Daishou’s face, long fingers clamping gently over eyelids. Kenji allows himself to be a coward for three more seconds, and then tilts his head to close the gap between them with a gentle kiss on the lips.

Maybe Daishou let himself be a coward too. It takes another two seconds for him to react, fingers curling around Kenji’s neck, mouth opening into the kiss, eyelashes fluttering against Kenji’s palm like butterfly wings.

Kenji lets his hand fall, as Daishou’s eyes open slowly, dazed. The red flush gathered across nose and cheeks stands out bright against pale skin, the sort of artwork that makes Kenji want to start a private collection displayed only at home.

Before he can move away, a hand reaches out and pulls him back into a shorter kiss. Daishou swings a leg up on the bed, lets his lips brush Kenji’s neck and jaw, cheek and forehead, featherlight.

“Fair and square,” Daishou murmurs, right into his earlobe. “Is that good enough for you, Futakuchi-kun‒”

“What, you want something more?” Kenji echoes right back at him, and grins. Still doesn’t like facing walls, and maybe never will.

The grin is mirrored on Daishou’s face, a softened glint in his eyes. “You brought Kado-Kado into your room,” he replies instead, smugly.

“Our avocado pillow does _not_ have a name, _Suguru_.”

“Our pillow,” Daishou repeats, triumphant. “Aww. How cute.”

Rolled eyes that don’t match Kenji’s widening grin. “Say you wanna kiss me and go.”

“What if I do?”

Walls and door knobs and Daishou Suguru. It’s an easy choice between the three.

“Fine by me.”

**Author's Note:**

> FOR MY FRIEND FLIP!! THANK YOU FOR HMU WITH FUTASHOU BRAINROT it managed to get me outta my writing slump and they're such a fun dynamic to explore!!! I HAVE NO THOUGHTS RN CURRENTLY MY HEAD IS SO EMPTY BUT I HOPE THIS WAS ENJOYABLE! <3


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